


Fireside Chat

by the_space_between1013



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: 7x10, Caryl, Caryl Secret Santa 2016, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-14 09:53:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9175084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_space_between1013/pseuds/the_space_between1013
Summary: SPOILER: Post 7x10. “We frequently pass so near to happiness without seeing, without regarding it, or if we do see and regard it, yet without recognizing it.”Submitted for @lovesdaryl on Tumblr for the Caryl Secret Santa 2016 exchange.





	

Flames cracked and hissed in the fireplace, the warmth reaching across the coffee table to the couple cuddled on the sofa. Carol lay on the bottom, Daryl on top, half his body twined with hers, head resting heavily on her breast. His arms were wrapped around her and he felt a bit like a pretzel, curled around her the way he was, but Daryl wouldn’t have it any other way.

It had been a month since his escape, three weeks since their loaded hugs that had spoken more with the strength of those embraces than either had been able to utter aloud, and two weeks since their first kiss.

A  _kiss._  

He still couldn’t wrap his mind around it sometimes. And they hadn’t even  _done_ anything, well much of anything, since then, but it was more than he’d ever hoped or dreamed for, so he wasn’t going to complain anytime soon. ‘Sides, this felt pretty damned good, right here where he was.

In her arms.

Like he belonged there.

Like this was some damned romance novel.

But he wouldn’t have it any other way.

There were so many things they had yet to discuss, so many things they had yet to learn about each other, but there’d be time for that, God willing. In the meantime, he thought, maybe they could start with the small things.

“What’d you like in school?” he asked abruptly, and then cursed internally at the way she started below him, the telltale little jump of surprise.

“Why do you ask?” she asked, curious as to his train of thought.

“Jus’…wanna get to know you better,” he replied somewhat defensively.

Carol laughed softly, looking down at his bent head. “Daryl, I think we know each other pretty well by now, but I’ll play. I really loved math and science as a girl. Algebra made sense and science experiments were fun.”

“Really? I woulda pegged you for art class or something,” he replied, looking up, brow furrowing in surprise.

“Why would you say that?”

“You’re always so handy with your hands, always fixing things, coming up with new ways to do things. Very creative,” he explained, shrugging a bit.

Carol laughed. “That’s true enough, but that was more by necessity than desire. In the world we live in now, you either adapt, or die. I’m holding that off as long as I can.”

Daryl shivered and tightened his grip. “Ain’t goin’ nowhere I’m not, not if I can do somethin’ about it.” He’d taken care of her more times ‘n he could count, and vice versa, and only just recently reconnected with her. These last few weeks were the first time in months that he’d felt like he was talking to her, his best friend, and now, something more. What they were to each other wasn’t exactly defined, but he knew she meant more to him than anything or anyone. And that was good enough for him.

“I’m not leaving you anytime soon. I just found you again,” Carol said softly, hand reaching down to brush the bangs from his blue eyes so she could look into them. She’d been so lost for months, and now she felt like she’d found herself again. Found  _them_ again.

A smile curving her lips, Carol leaned in and kissed him on his nose and was incredibly pleased when he didn’t flinch. He never flinched, not with her at least. “So,” she continued, changing the subject, “what did you enjoy in school? Shooting?” she teased.

“Actually I did,” he said indignantly. “Did good with the rifle and pistol. Shotgun kicked my ass til I got used to it. I was more used to rifles growing up. Hunted with that or a bow most’a the time. If I didn’t hunt, lots’a times I didn’t eat. Learned early. Necessity.”

Both were quiet a moment, thinking on his last statements. “But it wasn’t my favorite. Wasn’t much I liked about school, nothing really. Hated math and science, history bored the shit outta me, shop was fun and it came natural, but the class I liked best was English.” He felt her surprise, could see the eyebrows shooting up, mouth opening in shock. “Don’t act so surprised,” he said gruffly, a bit hurt, and moved to pull away, but she wouldn’t let him and stopped his upward progress.

“What’d you like about it?” she asked him, trying to prompt him into expanding on his answer.

“It wasn’t really what, but who,” he started.

She laughed lightly. “Teacher was a knockout?”

“No,” he defended. “She was 55 at the time.”

“And? You could have been hot for teacher,” she teased.

He snorted. “Fat chance. Anyway, before Ms. Santiago, I hated English. Hated writing. Reading. Essay tests. Any of that shit. But that year, she helped me. See, all through school, I was ‘Merle’s baby brother.’ Which really meant, Fuck Up Number 2.”

“They didn’t give you a chance to be yourself,” she said quietly.

“Nah. When I stepped into a class, they knew who I was, who they thought I was. So I stopped trying. Until her. She didn’t judge me right off the bat. I was me. And she helped me figure out who that was, for a time.” Until he went to high school and in Merle’s shadow lost the progress he’d won through Ms. Santiago’s coaching. “She made me watch that movie, On Golden Pond. I liked it, but didn’t expect to. Had a massive crush on Jane Fonda when I was a kid.” He laughed, thinking of it. Lust had swirled inside him at a young age, but he’d not known what it was at the time.

“She taught me different worlds could be explored in books, transport you to a place you’d never been without stepping outside the door,” he continued. “And for a poor ass kid like me, that was about as meaningful as handing me a million dollars. I was able to get away from Merle, from my pa, from everything that was fucked up in my life, though the movies and books she encouraged I watch.”

“What were your favorites?”

“I didn’t understand all the words, struggled quite a bit with it actually, but I liked The Count of Monte Cristo,” he replied hesitantly. Would she believe him? One of the jocks from the high school next door had knocked it out of his hands while he’d been reading after school. Because what could a Dixon have to do with  _reading?_ Especially something as ‘high brow’ as The Count of Monte Cristo. And young as he’d been, he  _had_ been Merle’s baby brother and even though he’d gotten his ass beat for his trouble, he wasn’t anyone’s bitch and had fought back.

“Wasn’t that about some rich man who was thrown into prison and he got out?” Carol asked, voice soft, mind straining to remember. It had been a long time since she’d read that book, a lifetime had passed.

“Something like that. This rich asshole wanted Dante’s girl and so he trumped up charges on him, got him thrown into prison and then told his girl Dante was dead. When he got out, he got revenge on all of them, everyone who had helped put him there,” Daryl explained, but real subtle-like. He wasn’t sure what she’d think of him reading and knowing stuff and no one had ever really believed he’d liked those stories he’d secreted away in his room and read furtively between classes in hall closets and the woods behind his school.

“Did you have a favorite quote?”

Daryl looked at her, eyes roving over her face, caressing her cheeks, taking in the seldom-used laugh lines at her eyes and her mouth, so rarely smiling. He did have a favorite quote, several in fact, but this one…this one was more applicable to his life now, than the ones he used to love as a youth, angry and hurt and demoralized and abused by his father, betrayed by those who should have seen it and didn’t. “We frequently pass so near to happiness without seeing, without regarding it, or if we do see and regard it, yet without recognizing it,” he quoted quietly, and a hush overcame the room.

Carol’s breath caught, listening to his husky voice, the whiskey poured over her senses. Her feelings stalled in her throat, and a lump formed there at his next words.

“I didn’t see you. I didn’t see what you were offering. On top of the bus, serving me food, the nicknames, the teasing. Threatening to hose me down. I didn’t see it. But I do now,” he admitted softly, pulling himself up to hesitantly drop a kiss on her lips.

It was still new, so brand new and he’d only recently realized what it was, that he was still unsure of himself, of her, of them. They’d not really vocalized what  _this,_ whatever this was,  _was._ Daryl couldn’t define it if you put a gun to his head, because it just  _was_. What he felt for her, he’d only realized, defied explanation. It was all of him, everything in him cared for her. Loved her, he admitted to himself. But even that word didn’t encompass everything he felt. It really was indefinable.

“’Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss. It is necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live...the sum of all human wisdom will be contained in these two words: Wait and Hope.’ I  _wanted_ to die, when I was in the Sanctuary. After being taken, after Abe, and Glenn.” His voice trailed off for a moment, but Carol didn’t interrupt, sensed he still had something to say. “I blamed myself. Worried Maggie would blame me. Rick. The rest of ‘em. You. I wanted to die, and a part of me didn’t care if I lived or died. I wasn’t afraid. That fucker thought he could break me, but he couldn’t.”

“You survived your father, you could survive him,” Carol added quietly.

Daryl nodded. “Exactly. Still, even with all that guilt and anger and self-loathing, somewhere between watching one of my best friends be murdered and getting out of that hellhole, I realized what I wanted to live for. Who I wanted to live for.”

He ducked his head a bit, and Carol could see the tinge of red to his cheeks.

“It wasn’t just Glenn, or Maggie or any o’the others,” he pressed on, peeking at her under the hair in his eyes. Daryl steeled himself and forced himself to hold her gaze as he said the next part. “It was you. It was always you. I jus’ didn’t realize what I felt was more than friendship, more than family. You’re mor’n any’a that to me,” he finished, accent thickening at the end, voice husky from emotion, feelings barely explored.

Carol had to blink back tears. “I love you, too. I don’t know when it changed from friendship to more. I just remember looking at you one day and thinking, ‘I want to spend the rest of my life with him by my side.’

“I don’t know how long we’ll have, hell we could be dead tomorrow, but whatever time we got, I know I don’t want you to leave again,” he said softly, touching on the elephant in the room.

Carol shook her head. “I’ve been in a dark place the last few months, and nothing could get me out of it but me. Thank you for trying to be there. I wasn’t ready to talk about it, I don’t know if or when I’ll ever really be, but thank you for not pushing. For giving me the space to figure it out. I’m done running. I’m not going anywhere,” she said, emphasizing her words with a hard kiss to his mouth.

For the first time in a long time, Daryl felt lightness in his chest and recognized it as contentment. He was with Carol, they were safe, and they were together. He didn’t know what would come tomorrow, hell, in the next hour. But he knew one thing, come what may, they would face it together.

 


End file.
